Excelsior’s Closing Ceremony
Last post for this year’s Excelsior, very sad. But it’s even worse if there is no end to this whole PHP maintaining thing (will be TypeScript soon, just see). Nah, just kidding. I enjoy it. Or maybe it’s because of everyone on the team—I love collaborating with people.
adventure awaits..
This post is actually written a week after the actual event, aha. But then again, I took most of the things from my journal so it’s gonna be quiiite accurate.
So, as my Excelsior post mentioned, we got a closing ceremony. It started at 1 PM and finished at 7 PM. There’s winners announcement and the rest of the day we spent with ✨ concert. ✨
Is It Me Who Was Late?
I usually arrive late for school events where I am not considered that much. Well, this time I was considered—I had to work as one of the winners’ trophies carrier. I was asked to arrive at 11 AM, but I stupidly came at 11:30. But eh, the briefing started at 12 PM, so I’m good.
(Almost) Tragic Ticketing
After the whole briefing for the trophies, I lurked around at the entrance of our auditorium. A text message then got to my phone on the IT division group chat saying that the ticket validation did not work. Guess who took part in writing that, ahaahaha. Well, I texted the person who said that—offering assistance, but it took forever for them to answer.
The next thing I know is that it suddenly worked—and yes, they did use the web app. Where did they do the scanning and how did all that happen without me knowing about it? Guess that I am indeed not considered that day. Such a mystery. But I did see the ticketing people opening that page of the website. Didn’t see them scan the codes, unfortunately.
Assuming that they actually used the app to scan codes, holyyy. Hhahaha. That is AWESOME—all the lines of code that I arranged with my own pair of hands doing the work. Nothing feels better than that.
Why do I sound like somebody who has never programmed anything-
Trophy Carrying Went Wrong
Hell, I would rather not talk about this one. I already had bad feelings about this. In fact, people were so concerned about me when I was practicing to carry the trophies. One of them even implied that I might be too weak for this 💀
Buuuut I did it anyways, and guess what, I NEARLY DROPPED TWO TROPHIES. Instantly traumatized and tossed the work to my partner—we exchanged tasks, so now I do the plaques thing carrying which were like 50 times lighter. Phew. The rest of the tasks were okay, but I was disappointed already because I felt like the day wasn’t unfolding as per my expectation 🤷
The Short Recess
The entrance area of our auditorium. The rightmost blue area is the photo booth.
After all that traumatizing events, we had our recess. My friends and I took some photos at the photo booth. Sanity instantly recovered. Really cool that we had that booth. Well eh, we spent forever just queueing to use the booth, aha.
Alas, we were not done yet. The trophy carrying work will continue. I forgot why but my whole gang was trynna get to our high school building1, then suddenly the trophy team was called to go back to the auditorium. Meh, I went back all alone.
Post-Duty
Thankfully, my trophy carrying partner was my close friend so I didn’t have to get bored and stuck waiting for my turn to carry plaques. We talked about some random topics in there. I can’t recall any, though—evidence that it was very out of context. But eh yeah, it was okay-ish. After that, the “concert” started and it was our high school band. Was quite enjoyable. I couldn’t hear any of the lyrics though ahahah.
A Food Scam!
Oh, almost forgotten. Earlier that day, the committee members were offered a fried chicken dinner package “discount”. They claimed that the price was lowered from like IDR 50k to IDR 20k for us, specifically. Allegedly. I was intrigued. That day I didn’t have enough cash on my wallet, though 🤷 so I asked some help from my parent to get some money to my e-wallet.
But after I got the money, the quota for the food order ran out. Gahhhhhh. Wavered, I proceeded to hunt for my dinner at the bazaar which was located in front of our auditorium. Little did I know, they were selling the same food for IDR 22k. Actually, I forgot which package that was but I sure do remember reading that from their banner. I then recalled my friend saying, ”..It was just a 2k discount, anyways.” Welp, they were right.
I bought the IDR 26k package because, why not. Little did I know that I would be getting a cup of cold lemonade as well. And a pair of gloves for eating! Those peeps who bought the IDR 20k package did not. Heck, they didn’t even get to pick their chicken flavor. My division’s lead, who saw me eating my cheese garlic™ chicken® while drinking a cup of cold lemonade™ was very furious of that.
The Illegal Operator
The operator room, occupied with a spotlight
I was in IT division yeah, but because I had that whole trophy carrying job, I wasn’t asked to do the multimedia controlling work. Or it was the IT lead’s decision, I don’t really know. I somehow got to go to the auditorium operator room to feast on my dinner, without anybody minding my presence. There was also one of our teachers there. Oddly enough, I wasn’t asked to get out of the room. I spent my time waiting for the peak of the event there: Jaz’s performance!
Waiting for Jaz. The lens glare be crazy in here..
I’m not a big fan of Indonesian songs, but sure they do sound good. And some of them hit haaard. I listened to some of Jaz’s songs the few days before (and ugh they kept on playing it on our school’s radio during recess as well) so I was definitely excited to see him sing in real life. I also had never attended a concert before.
And yeah he then performed on stage! And since I was at the operator room which was located at the top area of the auditorium, I can get to the balcony just for fun. The view was EEEPICC, but the echo was more noticeable and I couldn’t hear words clearly, aha.
Jaz from the balcony™ . Lighting was epic
Downstairs
I totally did not want to miss my first ever concert and being able to look at Jaz from just a few meters away (weirdest sentence in my whole blog but yes) so I went downstairs. Oh boy, the atmosphere was hella cool. All these for IDR 35k is kinda illegal. Actually, no, this legacy PHP™ maintainer deserves to get to the concert for free IMHO.
As for Jaz from just a few meters away, okay, nah. I didn’t even try getting to the front area LOL. He was just clear enough to be seen.
Jaz but so small I can't see
So yeah, spent the rest of the concert there.
Closing Thoughts
I LOVEEE EXCELSIOR!! I absolutely cherish the moments we all spared working together for an event that we all root in. Everybody supported one another—all as one big team. All the collaboration that went into the organization of the event is insane. Even though we encountered many kinds of troubles along the way, nothing stopped us because we always had help from the other members. Being part of the committee this year is an honor for me.
Also, funds division team, y’all are heroes for this event. Absurd amount of dedication, totally unbeatable. 🫡
As for the IT division, I am SOOOO over the moon to be part of the team. This is the first time I collaborated on a real world project involving programming! I can’t believe that I worked on one of the backbones of this event, as a 10th grader who barely knew about Excelsior. Hope somebody will ever notice my commits in the future, haha. Okay, that’s a little too far off—I will probably still be organizing 2 more Excelsior events. It would be verrryyyy, very sad to not have you here next year, Mr. IT coordinator. Hope to see ya helping just a bit in the future, I will miss the times we spent tackling Excelsior’s codebase at random places in school. Totally unforgettable. Means a lot to me :)
From the candidate interviews to its closing ceremony, here’s to us: the 2024 Excelsior’s committees.
Source: Excelsior's documentation division
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For those who don’t know about my school—we have separate buildings for each educational level. You can just get through the buildings by foot, though. ↩